Long Spanner Poems
Long Spanner Poems. Below are the most popular long Spanner by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Spanner poems by poem length and keyword.
Things bloom more beautiful when breaking down.
The nave now ploughs through foams of flowering trees,
a frozen caravel. Kissed by the breeze,
the river surface suddenly seems to frown
exquisitely. The apse’s jaunty crown
of weeds above one (sightless) eye would please
romantic poets. What was once a friese
lies strewn about, a shaley shanty-town.
We love whatever withers, atrophies.
To see a calked construction founder, drown
beneath its own detritus, by degrees
slough off its shape and, sinking to its knees,
expire, is satisfying. Velvet gown?
We’d much prefer to see a soiled chemise.
A lake? A cloud? A mountain? Megan Fox?
If we acknowledge Beauty in these things,
what are we saying? As when Smokey sings,
or girls emerge in slinky summer frocks,
something’s taking place outside the box
of regularity, and sprouting wings.
How might we classify these happenings?
A rupture in the norm? The whole Baroque’s
built on this very point. If Beauty rocks,
what is the special quality it brings,
and why is it so pleasing? Beauty flings
a spanner in the works of Orthodox,
and laughs at Workaday. It mocks
our essence, lurks in quirks, and smirks at clocks.
“The Wordsworth ouevre is cretinous. Discuss.”
The Long, Laborious Quest, The Sparrow’s Nest,
The Noble Oak of Guernica, Addressed –
We can’t escape the feeling he’s a wuss.
His subjects are unconscionable, plus
the rhymes he uses are a facilefest.
If only he were even half in jest!
His humour’s unintentional, and thus
more entertaining than he could have guessed.
Yet something in his scribblings seems to wrest
significance from dross, analogous
to Newton’s differential calculus,
invented by the by, at whim’s behest.
When Wordsworth falls apart, he’s at his best.
If I had a factory I would actually produce nothing at all because
Satisfaction can never be mass produced let alone happiness
Workers would not manufacture for their hands should be free
To craft rather than assemble in strict prearranged conditions
They would not sit idle of course but follow their creative minds
Overcome the vile dictate of fabricated needs for the masses
‘Back to poor roots’ established purveyors of doom interpolate
‘We need money machines not fine artisans and philosophers’
‘Leave thinking to the masters and disavow your utopian craze’
So while I am called a renegade rebel I lay claim to contempt
Of blindfolding slaves with cheap goods instead of pure virtue
Do not mind the malevolent label of anarchic revanchist treason
‘But what will they eat instead of the scraps from our production’
‘They will starve if we do not lead them like sheep to the slaughter’
‘We are kind humanitarians willingly sharing the means to our end’
I admit that my concept of work houses with no preordained tasks
Threatens the status quo throws a spanner into a well oiled machine
Of domination and marginalization fine tuned in centers of control
Yet the disorganized factory which I never owned in the first place
Will invent itself as soon as the non-workers can think on their own
Evolution is rather industrious and nothingness counts for a lot
Someone reached out
and asked me
Have you any tool's ?
A question to which i replied
Are you trying to be funny
or facetious
Why apart from me the greatest
tool of them all
So much so it's become my nickname
As i am both a spanner and a nut
and the box
People dig out to use when
in need of release and temporary
fix to plug a shticky connotation
A sort or sense of D.I.Y for those
who can't help themselves
That some feel sorry and pitty
for but deep down i appreciate
As without it or take it away
from me what else would i have
to live for
This is me this is my life but
granted it's not a life for everyone
myself included
But i haven't come across a tool
in my many box of tricks to fix
or repair the few littke nuts i
still have left
Guess something's like bridge's
we're never meant to be fixed
or crossed
Otherwise there would be
1 tool for everything and
only 1 box formed in the
shape of a coffin
That’s it the battle is won, the toilet can fight no more
Three weeks ago the flush would overflow.
And kept leaving a puddle on the floor
I looked in the book, it said I needed a spare part
I went to the merchant; “we have none, don’t lose heart?”
I can send you somewhere, and they do have a spare.
So I went armed with lots of new knowledge and credit card
The merchant looked at my list and gave me the part,
I took it striaght home and started the job, it was hard
Then found the part was too short for a start.
I rang them and told what was wrong
Don’t worry come on back,
We do have an extension pack
So I drove the ten miles still full of enthusiasm and song.
I need a spanner for this, mine does not fit
“Don’t worry we have just what you need
Some PVA tape, a washer or two
And then it won’t leak when you’ve peed.”
I turned off the water, I thought that I oughta
Everywhere went dry but the toilet.
So with some intervention, I put on the extension.
But still the floor kept getting wet.
After managing to fit a new isolator
My husband was pleased “how did you do that?”
I said it's a pipe and a nut, not an electricl generator.
It was easy, I said wearing my know- it-all hat.
I twisted and turned, and I taped every joint
I fitted the valve in the top of the cistern.
I turned the water back on and it worked a treat
The arm moved up and down like a piston
The water stopped when it should, and did not overflow
I was happy and yet my feet suddenly got wet
The nuts and pipes still had fight left in them
I sighed gave another turn, it was tight and difficult and yet
I stuck my head under, turned the spanner, one more turn
The book was ok, but it’s doing the job I did learn
One more turn is one turn too much.
It split the washer and pipe, I knew it was tight
When it screeched like a banshee or some such.
The water came out, but the isolator did the trick
Its a good job I had fitted it on
I gave it a turn and the water stopped in a tick
I t was then that I knew I had won
I was upset it was a bummer
But I went and got a plumber
Now I am queen of the toilet I have won.
The first poem I posted on Soup. One of the first 200 poems I deleted. I found a rough copy in an old scribble book.
Hardware Blues.
My dad he went down fighting, to keep his local hardware store
But the big boys took his customers and the bank said “Shut the door”.
He had sales and cut-price specials and bargains galore,
He thought and thought of ways that he could do more.
He opened the store all day and half the night to suffice
But Bunnings told their customers “We will cut his price”
Well its sad to say but working in his store has been no fun for me.
I will be glad to look for work elsewhere and glad to say I’m free.
I am quite convinced that in a hardware store there is no place
For a genteel and rather shy, member of the female race.
Men would come in asking for objects that I found quite obscene,
For example I was asked “Where would a bloke find a ball pein?”
Another walked up to me and gave me quite a shock
As he informed me that he desperately needed a plumber’s cock.
Yet another quite nice gentleman assumed that I knew
On what shelf he would find a tool to drive a screw.
I had to inform one man that he needed a pet shop for his pet
When he told me it was a Rover jumper that he needed to get
A man came in one day who had quite a stammer
I was sure I heard him wrong when he asked for a Bi hex spanner
One man became quite forceful and nearly made me sob
When he insisted that I must know where was a plumb rule and Bob !
Requests for a Tongue and groove, Pump plier, a Mortar pan and a Fitting tool
Put me in a quandary and made me feel quite the fool
Once a lady was in the store. I was pleased until she asked for a toilet brush
I admit that even asking for such a simple item as this had made me blush
A guy that barked out gruffly “Spirit Level !” brought me to my lowest point.
MY spirit was at its lowest ebb and I am glad I no longer work in this joint.
In three billion years the sun dies, Earth with it and the ring around Saturn too.
When will the apple fall?
Will it fall close or roll?
The apple rots eventually, the tree forgets and fly’s brains are too minuscule to understand at all how to mourn.
Grey hairs mean death.
It starts with the milk teeth twisted out, in blood and pain - experience is necessary for the end, I suppose.
How feelings infect the stomach then implode in a cloud of stardust that consumes Neptune’s ice cold handshake.
All this inevitable, repeatable for a few billion years.
And yet we worry of what is to come in the next fifty or so.
A death in the family - dominoes topple.
A spanner in the gut that wrenches and pulls and ties in knots all coherent thoughts.
A language of dashes and dots rattles with haste before the soul, mind, brain, spirit, heart and living tissue rots.
All the while pulsars rotate with a common rhythm but how beautiful it is that we must do the same:
To live and to breathe and to walk amongst start dust we must all just be dying stars.
A second in a black hole bends to a year.
A neutron star collapses a decade to a minute and we worry when or why or how the future may proceed.
As does Mars when his soul settles down and he marries, starts a family, then worries of his daughter’s daughter’s marital status.
The apple that hit the nail on the head rolled down the hill and was kicked into space to orbit, forever, Gaia’s deepest woes.
The same dust that it conceived flows through our veins today.
The pulsars vision of a continued rhythm is humanity’s constant dream.
All cosmic terror and dread, worries the same as an apple that is used to be bitten, a human that is conceived to indulge themselves in a pool of lifelong anxiety and a pulsar dreading the next time it beats.
That beat may never come.
Grunt grunt below the gutter
The man of the sewer works
With his big old rusty spanner
He twists the pipes, the nuts and bolts
That struggle to hold the metal that jolts
The rats and roaches scamper
When they hear the sewerman's steps
Plod plod plod goes the smelly sewerman
Onto the next battered and crusty pipe
Glog glog the stinky water churns
Flowing out in wispy waves
Greenish hue surrounds the river of filth
Looks like a witches wildest dream
Mr sewerman scrunches his bulbous nose
Shaking his head and clicking his tongue
As a fat rat chases past his bulky boots
Oh Mr sewerman sir
Look how much you toil and swear
See and smell all what you wear
Do you like this job Mr sewerman sir
Are you merry and well with the fat rats
Jolly and gay with huge skidding roaches
I say your plight is choice
Look at that large frame
You could have been a pawn in the country's game
And left the smelly sewers that you call home
Honour and grace could have earned you a place
As a general or even a captain of the horde
Instead you cower behind the sewer's cover
And douse yourself in the smelly waters
Look at me Mr sewerman sir
When I strut with my uniform in town
People wave and salute me in honour
Do you envy my shiny medal
And the respect from the townsfolk?
I went for a walk with an Aardvark
In a forest of beer bottle trees,
Entranced by their gentle swaying,
Hanging and clinking in the breeze;
And I found a top spanner bush
Growing at a convenient height
And me and my friend the Aardvark
Settled down for our boozy night.
We sampled the pale ale and bitter
Then the stout the mild and the pils
Organically brewed with such care
To avoid any hangover ills.
And my Aardvark danced a jig,
Accompanying himself on a lute
The wind blowing through the bottles
Providing a raw wild sort of flute.
We discussed the ways of the world
Each providing our original views
On such as the Albigensian heresies
And the standard of reporting the news.
Then a bell rang through that forest
And a voice rolled in my head
Its closing time for the winter
And I woke up alone in my bed.
I sprang from my sheets with a zest
Had a quick burst on my tambourine
Before cleaning my teeth with such energy
On my oral hygiene machine.
I ate toast and two eggs for my brekkers
With a selection of blended fruit teas
Hungry from my walk with that Aardvark
In that forest of beer bottle trees.
I went for a walk with an Aardvark
In a forest of beer bottle trees,
Entranced by their gentle swaying,
Hanging and clinking in the breeze;
And I found a top spanner bush
Growing at a convenient height
And me and my friend the Aardvark
Settled down for our boozy night.
We sampled the pale ale and bitter
Then the stout the mild and the pils
Organically brewed with such care
To avoid any hangover ills.
And my Aardvark danced a jig,
Accompanying himself on a lute
The wind blowing through the bottles
Providing a raw wild sort of flute.
We discussed the ways of the world
Each providing our original views
On such as the Albigensian heresies
And the standard of reporting the news.
Then a bell rang through that forest
And a voice rolled in my head
Its closing time for the winter
And I woke up alone in my bed.
I sprang from my sheets with a zest
Had a quick burst on my tambourine
Before cleaning my teeth with such energy
On my oral hygiene machine.
I ate toast and two eggs for my brekkers
With a selection of blended fruit teas
Hungry from my walk with that Aardvark
In that forest of beer bottle trees.
I spent my day shopping with Ruby
(I find her an absolute pain)
Torturous tale to transmit truthfully
You'll kindly let me explain...
Friday I purchase veg and fruit routinely
A schedule pleasing to retain
Ruby put a spanner in habit supremely
Consumed by cranky campaign
Fondling each ripe piece - ridiculous
Their intact skin forsaken
Commentary made us conspicious
My cheeks stung pink as bacon
Fumbling excursion injected remorse
In friendly familiar domain
Ruby's cruel fruit critiquing discourse
Done with utter disdain
Finally (red faced), we got to register
- feat she pulled when paying
Whole shop hushed as a seminar
Short change accusation relaying
In dulcet tones in foyer, I refuted it
Calm voice rigorous to contain
Ruby's shrill insisted the fruit was s**t
Plus she'd have to check coins again
Adament she had been ripped off
- I found the debarcle innane
Cash register accuracy blatantly scoffed
Treatment of clerk barely humane
Pressed lipped shoppers regarded us
A pair of loons, I shaking frustrated
Hoped the dear got hit hard by a bus!
Notched her up to cousin most hated
3rd August 2020
Written for Contest : I Went Shopping With Ruby
Sponsor : Julia Ward